Trip to Boston-Sunday and Monday

So I thought I could do one post on my trip to Boston, but judging on the length of this one which so far only covers two days, I guess I'll have to do 2 posts. So it will be backwards since that is how this lovely blogger works.

On Sunday we stayed home and had friends over for a yummy dinner. It was beautiful so we just hung out and ate on the deck, talked forever and enjoyed each other's company.

After dinner we went back to the South Shore area again since Auntie's didn't get to go on Saturday when I took my friends.We went to one of my very favorite places on earth. I really mean on earth. And I had some of my favorite people with me-Karin and Marion as well as Grammy and Papa O. Always fitting since they are the ones who first took me there when I was a young nanny. I fell in in love with it instantly and do not take a trip to Boston without going there. It is called Hull Point. It is a little peninsula of land that comes out into the bay and you can see Boston in the background. The town is called Hull. You can see sailboats and even huge ships come in. We would walk along the beach and find a cool rock and take a fine point sharpie and put a date on it and sign them. I still have a couple of these rocks. This time we walked around to a different area than when we have been before.

Here are a few shots from a rickety old dock we found and some other sights.On Monday morning, I took Karin to work so I could use her car. She works right down the highway from the Boston Temple. It was pretty early, so I went to see the temple before I met Mags and her sisters. It is such a beautiful temple. I remember when I got off my mission in 1996 they had decided it would be built there so our ward took a hike up the hill to where the temple would sit. Now the stake I used to live in is getting ready to have the ten year anniversary. Time sure flies!!!




I took my friends to a couple of my favorite little seaport towns on Monday before I left. First we went to Rockport. Here is a famous building and a little inlet that is so pretty.
I loved this red boat. I wanted to do my frames I like to do on pictures, but have been so busy to do editing on picnik, so no frames, but still love this pictures. I loved these boats and was wishing I could have gone out on one. I could totally live in a town on the coast!!
This building is one of the most photographed, if not the most photographed buildings in the country, I am told. I love it. I have been before, but you can still take lots of pics of it. Very cool. And there's a cool pirate ship next to it as well:)
I put this one in because I loved the lines and the simplicity.
I loved the colors of the dingies tied up.
After we left Rockport, we went to another famous sea village called Gloucester. It has a history of fishermen for generations and I believe the movie The Perfect Storm was based on Fisherman from Gloucester. It has a harbor area with all the fisherman and boats and then a pretty beach areas. There is a famous Statue and Memorial to Fisherman.

Here are Maggie, Nate and sleepy baby Maya at the Fisherman's Memorial in Gloucester.
We had such a great time at Rockport and Gloucester. We stood at the Fisherman's Memorial forever reading the names of all the men who were lost at sea. It was awesome reading the older names. A few that stuck out to me were Angus and Axel, Ichabod, um well I'm forgetting them now, but I wish I could have a list. It would be fun for some of the names to come back into style again. If I were ever to have a boy, I would love to use one of the older more unique names. I told Darin if we had twin boys, they would be Angus and Axel:) Not that this would EVER happen:):)

Ahhh, so such a great trip!! And I was going the whole time-well except for the wonderful relaxing Sunday. By the time I got home to my Aunties house Monday night, we only had a few minutes until I had to go to the airport. My travels were very smooth and I got home in good time. I love Boston and was so happy to be able to go. Thanks Darin so much!! Already looking forward to our trip in August!!

Landon had a birthday!

Landon's actual birthday fell on a Tuesday which is the day that Silver Diner has family night. We gathered some good friends and went to dinner. The price's gave him a gift that he and his siblings love. The Jill, Lizzie Alaina joined us as well as Ms. Mary, one of Spencer's teachers whom we have grown to love so much. We'll miss her so much next year.

There was a singer there that night and Jordan and Liz were in heaven. They danced and danced and led the little parade. The boys kept busy playing with new toys. We had such a fun night.
It seemed like Landon's birthday lasted a week! His birthday party-our 3rd celebration- was the Saturday after his birthday in the Soft play room at Lee Rec center. It was a little nerve wracking that day since his party was at 3:30 and they called me at 11:00 and told me that they had double booked the time slot for his party and could I move it an hour. What? Really? I had no choice. I didn't want to change the date so I called everyone. It worked out fine. A couple families liked the change but we missed one little girl. Everyone had a blast! Here are some fun pics:

Landon LOVES the ballpit!! He was in there a ton!
I had fun with my camera because I could take much better pictures than with my old point and shoot. It is really a horribly lit room, so it was nice to be able to figure it out to take some good sots.
Darin was flying out to Germany the Saturday before Landon's birthday, so we decided to do his gift before he left. We lucked out because I took Jordan and Spence to Toys R Us and there was only 1 left of the thing we wanted.

Since Landon loves to play in water, he got a new water table. We didn't even wrap it-we just sent Landon upstairs and covered it up with a quilt for him to pull off when he came down.

His brother and sister were pretty excited as well:)

Here's my big 3 year old!! Seems like yesterday I was crying all the way home from the hospital when we had to leave him in the NICU....and now he's my big boy!!


Happy Birthday Landon-we love you!!!

Going Alone

I figured I would put up something new-a little more on the happy side. I'm feeling a little stressed at the moment, but it's a happy stress. I leave in the morning for my little trip-4 days all by myself!! But of course, I worry about having everything just perfect for Darin before I leave. Don't know why I do that, but nonetheless I do.

So I am trying to do laundry, clean the house, get food ready, send off pics to some people I have done photos for lately, do a letter to the parents of the first graders for the end of the year picnic, clean the car out, pack, try to get a new pair of shoes and maybe a new shirt or two.....um, think that's it.

This week has flown by! Darin is still trying to get back on schedule. He is doing well, except falls asleep early in the evenings. I was folding clothes last night and Jordan was reading to him and the next thing we know he was snoring away. So funny. But I was pretty lucky he even got home from Germany. His flight was 3 hours delayed due to the ash, but then when he was in the air a couple hours the pilot came on and told them that they had closed the Munich airport. WHEW!!! That was a close call-so happy he was able to get on the plane.

So I am pretty excited to see my friend Mags, her hub, baby and cute sisters. I land early tomorrow and will go meet them right away. I will be able to observe Nate, Mag's husband take pictures. She said he really gets in the zone to make sure the pic is right, so I won't ask him questions during-just watch and ask questions after. She said he loves to talk about it, but now while he is shooting. Looking forward to asking him tons of questions!!

I've been trying to prep the kids for my trip-Spencer is not too happy about it from his reactions. He has the most trouble when I leave-cries for me. He told me I could only go for one day or I had to take him with me. Landon won't really figure it out for while. He still looked for Darin a couple days after he left. Last night Jordan asked me to wake her up before I left. She thought I left today. She'll be ok, too; unless Darin makes her mad, then she'll cry for me, too.

Oh, another thing is that Darin gets to take Landon to the Dr. on Friday-if you have a minute, say a prayer for him:) He'll have both boys. Spencer will be great-he is very into pleasing me lately and doing what we tell him. Landon likes to run all over at the Dr. office, so Darin will have fun with that.

Boston here I come:)

I hope tomorrow is better

So I have had a rough couple of days. The Gods are just not looking down favorably upon me at at the current moment. Yesterday the damage was done by noon, and today by 11:00, although today improved greatly as the day went on and ended really well.

Wednesday morning:
~went to 4 stores to find cupcake liners. I was asked to bring cupcakes to the school for teacher appreciation week. As per usual, I procrastinated and had an hour to make them and deliver them. Safeway didn't have them, went to Rite Aid-no, then the dollar store and they were out. So we went to Giant. Made them and finally got the to the school, only 20 min late-which turns out didn't really matter much.
~At Giant Landon was in the car cart and had his head hanging out of the cart and I didn't realize it and he banged his head ending up with a cut. There was a lady who saw it and made a huge deal-getting ice, getting the manager, asking me over and over if he is ok. I felt so dumb. I got wet paper towels because it was bleeding and she insisted on getting ice from Starbucks.

(Landon's head is fine. He has a tiny little cut and it didn't affect him at all for the rest of the day.)

~When I was checking out, the checker was chatting with me and could tell I was frazzled and said it was ok. I just burst into tears. I had had enough by that point. Left the store in tears.
~Dropped my gas cap under the the car while getting gas.

There were lots of other things that just went wrong. It was a rough day and I was so happy to go to bed.

Thursday:
The day started off so well. The kids were cooperative and we got out the door with minimal uproar. Jordan even had to finish her homework and didn't fuss about it. Maybe the fact that she was wearing a new outfit helped that out.

It was such an enjoyable morning for the next little while. Spencer and I went and picked out Flowers to plant and went to Home Depot and got all our mulch. We are ready to plant our flower garden!! We ran home to get Spencers lunch and go to the bathroom. I hung my keys up and did what I needed to do. I gathered all my stuff and then ran out the door.....and as I shut it, I realized I had not grabbed my keys!! Lovely. I was already in a hurry to go get Landon from his preschool for a dentist apt. We went all around the house checking windows. I tried to get in the back to no avail. I finally decided to try the living room window because I had just had it open and knew it was unlocked. I pried the screen off and was in the process of opening the window when the little wooden bench that I should not have been standing on gave way and fell apart. I went crashing to the ground and rolled onto the grass. Now I have nice scrapes on both knees from the wood and down other parts of my legs from the rocks I rolled over.

Story of my life.

I did manage to lift Spencer up through the window so he could go and unlock the door. Thank goodness I had him or I would never have been able to get in.

And to answer the question you all have, I did have a spare key hidden outside, but the kids had played with it and it was missing.

We made it to the dentist right on time, but he got in late due to me having to fill out the paper work, so Spencer was 1/2 hour late for school. Lanny did pretty well at the dentist, but he had a hard time keeping his mouth open. He has a couple tiny little cavities that they wan to fill. Ugh. I don't know what happened to the poor kid-the other two didn't have any at 3 yrs. They are actually still good. Ah well.

The rest of the day went pretty well, thank goodness. I talked to Darin in Germany, played at the park, dinner at the Noodle place, a fun time at bedtime with the kiddos. Now resting.

Tomorrow has to be better!!!!

Whole Foods Market

We have been doing a Mother Goose Time preschool with a couple other moms the last couple months. The theme for may is "Food, Fitness and Fun." We decided to take a field trip to Whole Foods Market to teach the kids about fruits and veggies. One of the moms arranged a trip for us. There was a nice produce guy there to help us-Mr. Steve. He was really nice and let the kids hold all the food, which they loved. We saw lots of thing and learned about how they grew and where they grew.

At one point, the kids were all grabbing apples and bananas to eat. Mr. Steve had stickers for us to all have on complimentary piece. That was nice. My apple was pretty good!

Here are Spencer and Landon learning some new things. I forget the name of the leafy veggie with the pink in it-I just thought it was cool looking and had to take a pic. Landon liked the mushrooms. There were tons of mushrooms. I said that to Mr. Steve and he told me places like Japan would have an entire aisle of them. Holy cow.
Ok, I was in love with this produce section. It was simply beautiful. I loved all the bright colors and how all the fruits and veggies were displayed. So pretty. Our fun produce guy told us he sees babies looking around at all the colors. I could have just taken pictures of food all days. I did get a couple funny looks when I took a few shots. We did get a few funny looks as we took the kids around.

Just look at the colors and the display.
More beautiful colors. I loved the contrast. They were so pretty, makes me want to be a vegetarian. Well, not really but I would like to learn how to cook with more of these veggies.

(On a side not, somewhat related I was told something funny about it at the gym yesterday. I saw a friend working out and told her about our trip. I said I would like to learn to cook more veggies and she said "It's like beer...you don't like it on your first try, takes a few times to get a taste for it. The same thing for vegetables. You just have to keep trying them" Funny-my first thought was "if you don't like beer the first time, why do you try again?" Don't really think you can compare attaining a taste for beer to attaining a taste for fruits and vegetables.

Anyhow, here are some more pretty colors. We had a fun time having the kids tell us all the colors and letting them hold the food. Spencer of course liked the orange peppers.

There was also a big egg section. They had eggs just laying loose-bad news if my boys got too close. There were a couple I liked:
Green eggs? These are Emu eggs. I really want to see what they look like inside. I was amazed. They are really heavy and very hard. I didn't hold it long, though-these little suckers are pretty pricey-$29.99!! I wondered why these ones were smaller than the Ostrich, but were the same price. Not sure how you prepare an Emu egg, but they are sure pretty.
Here is an ostrich egg-a whopping $29.99!!! Mr. Steve the produce man told me they sell 2-3 a week and that people like to use them in baking. Holy cow-how much baking must one do to use one of these eggs? I actually picked on up and it had a chip in it-they are heavy and the shell is really thick.

This was truly the most beautiful produce dept. I have ever seen in a grocery store. Pretty impressive, really. Too bad the prices are through the roof. The kids also liked seeing the seafood section. There were some whole little octopus so they like that, as well as some really huge fish. Was worth the trip just to entertain the kids. But I wondered what people thought of a group of moms with a bunch of kids just showing them fruits and vegetables. But they learned-yesterday we were talking about something and carrots came up. Landon says "carrots grow in the ground." Thanks Mr. Steve the produce guy:)

We walked around the rest of the store a bit-mostly for my curiosity, and it is clear that I will not be doing my weekly shopping there any time soon!! I looked at a pack of chicken breast and was shocked-$28.00!!! Holy Cow. People were just loading up their carts-must be made of money because that store is soooo expensive.

I'll stick to Shoppers, thanks:)

Sunday afternoon at the Arboretum

On Sunday I decided to finally try going to the National Arboretum. Darin is out of town, so I didn't want to stay home all afternoon. And I didn't think his feelings would get hurt if he missed this outing;although I do think he needs to go back with us sometime.

Anyhow, I wasn't sure if I was on the right track-the area I drove through to the there wasn't the nicest, but we did find it. And it is huge. I couldn't really tell by the map online that you would really need to drive around to see the various collections. We parked by the visitors center and just hung around there and the columns. I did drive by the azaleas, but they were pretty much done for. I'll have to see them next year for sure.

There was a pond all around the visitors center and the kids didn't really want to leave it.

"daddy duck" as the kids say. Why are the males always so beautiful and the females are boring brown?
We found a pond with huge koi that you could feed. Of course Spencer was thrilled since the majority of them were bright orange. He even picked one that was "his" He would watch for it and get excited each it would surface. They had a little machine where you could get fish pellets for a quarter, so the kids loved feeding them. When we got there, Landon was asleep in the stroller, then we decided to get him out to see the fish and my stress level doubled. I thought for sure he would fall in, but luckily he didn't (just wait, he does get wet later)
We spotted this little duck family and were smitten. The were so cute. We watched forever!!
11 little ducks went out to play.....
These babies were soooo cute. We watched them for what seemed like forever! The kids did not want to leave the pond.
I was so excited to go to the columns and let the kids run around. Little did I know what would follow!! No one told me that there was a fountain up there.....

This is out of order, but I didn't want to leave it out. Look at the smile on that kid's face....trouble, nothing but trouble!!
Some of the columns. I don't reall like how this pic turned out, but you can see who big they are.
So the water thing started out pretty innocent. A bunch of other kids were walking down the water fall thing so the kids asked to take their shoes off and walk down as well. I figured it would be ok-I hadn't walked to the top, so I didn't realize there was a more deep actual fountain at the top. I was trying to take pictures and keep my camera from getting wet and not step into the mud. They were having such a fun time-laughing and giggling. It just progressed little by little until the kids ended up in the fountain.
Uh Oh......I tried getting them out and ended up twisting my ankle chasing Landon. The stones are really uneven...ah well. I figured better to take pictures than keep fighting them. I just got laughed by the people near me anyhow, so I gave up.
If there is water around, Landon will be wet. He LOVES water and cannot resist it. Here he is soaking wet!
Jordan and Spence goofing around by the columns. This is probably when Landon decided to take a dip in the fountain...well, maybe he already had, seeing how wet Spence is in the pic.
Three very wet, but happy children!
We did have such a great time! I was a little embarassed when the people all around were laughing at us and the kids were obviously ignoring me when I would tell them to get out. It was like I had a little devil on one shoulder telling me it was great that they were having fun and to leave them alone, but then and another little angel telling me that I need to make them act more refined and get out of the water. The devil won. The thing is that if there would have been no else one around, I would have been in there with them!!! Well, and I didn't want to get my camera wet.

So when we got to the car I stripped them all down. Luckily I had a towel under Landon's car seat and Jordan had some bandanas from her browni

I didn't know that the arboretum was so HUGE!!! You really have to drive around to see a lot of the collections...

Marble fun!

The boys and I had so much fun on Sunday morning. (Jordan slept in as she got home late from her girl scout day camp.) We played with the marble maze game. The boys were pretty creative-Spencer plays with this at school, so he got right to work and knew what he wanted to do.
Landon was so proud of his creation. He lined them all up on the floor and put them together himself.
We found a bag of marbles at ToysRUs for only $1.00. I bought the marble game at the consignment sale a while back but there were no marbles, so the boys were so excited to actually have marbles.

If you know my boys, you know whose hands these are. Yup, Spencer continues his obsession with the color orange.
I built a tower with Landon, and Spencer made one of his own, then we decided to combine them and made a big tower. It really was so much fun. I was having a blast figuring out what would work and what didn't. Landon couldn't reach the top so he had to get the stool.
Spencer taking a look at our handy-work.
more shots of our fun time!
This was such a great time-I loved spending a quiet Sunday morning with the boys playing.
And it was $7.50 very well spent!!